Impact of Weather Conditions on Travel Demand – The Most Common Research Methods and Applied Models

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the applied research methodologies and developed travel demand models that take weather impact into account. The paper deals with trip generation and modal split as elements of travel demand that best describe changes in the travel behaviour in different weather conditions. The authors herein emphasize the importance of research in local conditions in all climate zones, especially in areas where climate and modal split characteristics are different from those in common research areas. This review is designed as a brief guide on how the impact of weather can be explored in order to encourage conducting research even in the countries where there is no systematic traffic and travel data collection. The stated adaptation technique followed by the panel household travel surveys may be particularly appropriate for those countries. It is concluded that small budgets should not be considered an obstacle, because it is possible to draw reliable conclusions based even on small samples. Moreover, modern research methods enable a cheaper survey process together with the possibility of obtaining higher quality of results. The increasing popularity of research in this field should contribute to the creation of more resilient transport systems all over the world. A special contribution of this paper is the review of research studies carried out in central, western and southern Europe and not mentioned in any review paper before.

Modelling the Impact of Rain in Traffic Assignment Procedures

“…On Researchers explored the impacts of adverse weather conditions on both transport demand and supply. When speaking about transport demand, previous studies have shown that adverse weather conditions lead to a significant change in modal distribution [10][11][12]. Also, adverse weather conditions increase the probability of a traffic accident [13,14].…”

The Impact of Weather Conditions on Mode Choice in Different Spatial Areas

“…They found that cycling and walking in spring and autumn are more affected by temperature variations in northern Sweden than in central and southern Sweden [16]. Against this background, Dragana, Ivan, Vladimir and Jadranka [2], who conducted an extensive literature review of investigations of the impacts of weather conditions on travel demand, However, not all of the survey participants reported the exact addresses of their points of departure and arrival, meaning the data set does not include grid cells for all of the trips reported. The grid cells of the points of departure, however, were needed to identify the nearest weather stations.…”

“…Various scholars have demonstrated the importance of the effect of weather conditions on people's mobility behaviour in the past two decades [1,2]. In general, active modes such as walking and cycling appear to be more sensitive to weather conditions than travelling by car or public transport [3].…”